Google just can’t seem to play nice with China and their censorship laws as of late and now the search giant has announced that the stop to censorship on their search engine could occur by the end of March.
Several reports are hinting that a resolution may be underway on both sides, but no specifics have been given.
The disagreements between the company and country have lead Android phones to being delayed, has canceled Google developer events in the country and has shown Google’s unflinching (up until this point) belief in freely available information in all forms.
Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, has stated that “something will happen soon” which led Wall Street Journal sources to the conclusion that March is the magic month of removing censorship.
When asked how China will retaliate Li Yizhong, a Minister of Industry and Information Technology in China said
“if you don’t respect Chinese laws, you are unfriendly and irresponsible, and the consequences will be on you” [WSJ]
If I could be so bold, it would be an interesting turn of events if Google began removing China based search results from U.S. results. For example, thousands of China etailers pretend to have a U.S. presence but actually ship from China, it would be a decent hit to China’s online sales sector if U.S, European, Australian and other search results failed to show any China based companies in their searches. Is that censoring? Sure…but using censorship against China would be quite ironic, plus it would help get rid of a lot of counterfeit product sites trying to rip off U.S. customers, they could kill two birds with one stone.
What do you think the outcome of this whole mess will be? Leave us your thoughts.
